Extreme supporters of gun rights who think that people should be allowed to carry rifles and other guns openly in almost any public place including schools, libraries, and churches, may now be tempted to temper that gung-ho, anything goes, attitude. The Black Panthers have decided that they too should carry guns openly in order to combat what they see as reckless and unjustified violence by the police against the black community.
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No, not marijuana, real grass.
Someone in England who wanted to put down a new lawn decided that the easiest and cheapest way to do so was, with a friend, to roll up strips of someone else’s new lawn when the owner was not there and take them away. They were caught on video but police have not been able to identify the pair as yet. What I don’t understand is why the neighbor who observed this and filmed it did not confront the thieves or even yell out from their upstairs window. Maybe they called the police but they did not come in time.
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We know that the Catholic church takes its consecrated wafers, which they believe have been transformed into the body of Jesus, very, very seriously, as PZ Myers (among many others) can attest when they treated it as just another wafer and triggered a massive outcry.
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We tend to think of the US Supreme Court as being sharply split along ideological lines. But as this article points out, that is because the media focuses on a few high profile cases which have an elevated profile precisely because they are split that way. In actuality, there is a remarkable degree of agreement among the justices in their rulings, with even the lowest level being 66% between Ginsburg and Thomas
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Ireland is apparently going to have a referendum on marriage equality in 2015. Here is a promotion that has been created by the group LGBT Noise for an upcoming march in support of equality.
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I like eating bread and butter. The problem is that butter from the fridge is hard and cannot be spread easily without tearing into the bread. So I usually have to plan in advance and keep the butter out a few hours before I eat so that it softens up. And then I put it back after eating because of the belief that if kept out too long, it will go bad.
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Once in a while, especially at times when people are fighting and killing over religion more than usual, I like to link to this audio of a rant by British comedian Marcus Brigstocke. The whole thing is worth listening to but especially the part where he talks about how while the violence is committed by a few extremists, the undoubtedly much larger number of religious people who are peaceful cannot completely escape responsibility for what is done.
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You would think that those religious people who insist on inserting religion into government would have been satisfied with the US Supreme Court’s verdict in the Greece v. Galloway case that said that it was not unconstitutional for governmental entities to open their meetings with prayers.
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As a culture, we have become more used to the idea that people can feel that their bodies do not match their own sense of identity. This is usually manifested in terms of gender and to some extent society has begun to come to terms with transgender people and transvestites, though there is still a long way to go. People are at least aware of them, even if not accepting, and those groups still experience a lot of enormous discrimination and abuse.
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Bank of America is the latest to pay a fine for mortgage fraud that led to the financial crises that resulted in thousands of people losing their homes. In announcing the fine that had been agreed to of $16.65 billion, Attorney General Eric Holder said today:
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